Daring to Live Again

By Matt Rees Sunday, July 25, 2004
    • You know you're getting close to Mahaneh Yehuda when you notice the strong scent of cardamom and see the ultra-Orthodox Israeli men, in their black Homburg hats and long beards, scurrying home with their bags of vegetables. Then you spy the green-bereted Border Police, eyeing the noisy flow of customers from behind a barrier. And the once cheery mural now defaced with graffiti reading DEATH TO ARABS.

    The 117-year-old market is the heartbeat of Jerusalem. Until spring, three years of the intifadeh had brought business to a near crawl as it stoked fears that the 90,000 people who crowd the narrow lanes each week could become targets for Palestinian suicide bombers. Now the market's brisk pulse is back as Jerusalemites respond to five months without a bombing and to the construction of a "separation fence" along the border with the West Bank that they hope walls off terrorism.


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    The market has seen plenty of violence. David Boneh, a shopkeeper, points along the alley of stalls his grandfather built in 1923 to the spot where a suicide bomber blew himself up in 1997. Boneh then turns to indicate where another bomber detonated his charge moments later, in front of the display of pickles and olives. That attack killed 15 people; the bomber's ravaged torso landed on Boneh. Though there were bigger attacks elsewhere in Jerusalem, the two bombings in the crowded alleys of Mahaneh Yehuda during the intifadeh added to its status as a byword for the horrible inevitability of terrorism, and many Israelis simply stopped coming. Boneh almost gave up after his sister Rose and 10 others were killed in January when a bomber struck on a bus near the center of town — one of two successful suicide attacks in the city this year. Boneh was devastated but forced himself to return to work in the market. "There is a feeling that the city is more alive," he says.

    Spirits generally began to turn around in the spring, in the aftermath of Israel's assassination of the two most senior leaders of Hamas. Israelis waited fearfully for the revenge attacks predicted by the Islamic group's leaflets. Surely there would be new additions to the litany of intifadeh attacks. But the assaults never came. If Hamas couldn't unleash a wave of terror after losing its two top men, Israelis figured their army and security services must have been able to rein in the threat. Cafes began to snap back to life.

    At the same time, Israelis watched with interest as sections of their new wall began to appear along the ridges of East Jerusalem. It has brought a sense of security that perhaps exceeds reality: only 11 miles of a planned 52 miles of fence through Jerusalem are completed. Eli Mizrahi, who owns a cafe in the market and heads the merchants' association, says the wall has had one clear effect: store owners are finally willing to look to the future and listen to his plans to upgrade the market.

    The dangers haven't disappeared, of course. Israeli security officials say there are 57 active warnings of planned terrorist operations. And 40 suicide bombers have been apprehended this year, either preparing for their mission or en route to their target.

    But life is returning to a certain normality. Outside the Caffit cafe in the city's German Colony, twice a target for attempted suicide bombings, an Ethiopian Jew checks bags and swipes a metal detector over would-be diners before unlatching the security gate. Most of the restaurant guards in Jerusalem are drawn from the underprivileged Ethiopian community — few others are willing to take a low-paying job that could lead to a terrible death. The Ethiopian security check has become so quotidian that only the naivete of a child can expose the strangeness of it. As an Israeli woman walked along the street with her 4-year-old daughter recently, an Ethiopian passed them. "Mommy," the girl said, "why didn't you show him what's inside your handbag?" No matter how high Israelis build their fence, that girl may well be opening her own bag to an Ethiopian when she's fully grown.